1968: A brief political cautionary tale
A year of crippling division and mind-numbing violence led to a Republican victory
“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it”
On March 12, 1968, Senator Eugene McCarthy (D-Minnesota), an anti-war candidate, nearly defeated President Lyndon Johnson (D-Texas), who was seeking a second full term, in the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary.
Four days later on March 16, seizing on the President’s weakness, Senator Robert Kennedy (D-New York), the former U.S. Attorney General and the greatest crimefighter in American history, announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination.
On March 31, President Johnson shocked the world during a televised address, announcing that he had reconsidered and would not seek reelection.
Five days later, on April 4, Dr. Martin Luther King was murdered in Memphis by James Earl Ray, a white nationalist who was supporting Alabama Governor George Wallace, the far-right American Independent Party’s segregationist candidate for President.
On April 27, Vice President Hubert Humphrey (D-Minnesota) jumped into the race, announcing his candidacy, but he was too late to enter any of the primaries. Still, because of his overwhelming support from Democratic delegates in the non-primary states, Humphrey appeared to hold the inside track on the race with Kennedy and McCarthy.
Kennedy scored a major victory on May 7 in the Indiana primary and another one the following week in Nebraska. However, on May 28, Senator McCarthy, openly disdainful of Kennedy, who had refused to debate him, scored a stunning upset by taking the Oregon primary.
That set the stage for the crucial June 4 primary election in California which Kennedy won handily.
Tragically, just minutes after his victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, Senator Kennedy was shot by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian refugee, at 12:15 A.M. on June 5. He died the following night, June 6 at 1:44 A.M.
To be clear, Kennedy did not capture the Democratic nomination with his victory in California. According to UPI, Kennedy won 172 of California’s 174 delegates, as well as 24 additional delegates in the South Dakota primary that night. Kennedy’s total delegate count ran to 393½ convention votes, still far behind Hubert Humphrey’s 561½ delegates but ahead of Eugene McCarthy, who had 258.
The final battlefield between Kennedy and Humphrey would have been the 1968 Democratic National Convention (August 26-29). But there in Chicago—while the whole world was watching—the badly divided and grieving Democratic Party self-destructed, paving the way for Richard Nixon, whom John Kennedy had defeated for the Presidency in 1960, to defeat Vice President Humphrey and his running mate, Senator Edmund Muskie (D-Maine).
The final popular and electoral votes, respectively, were Nixon (43.4 percent and 301), Humphrey (42.7 percent and 191), and Wallace (13.5 percent and 46).
Remembering what was lost in 1968 by a great writer who lived through it.